Chronic pain, drug gaps and gender bias drive rising disability risk for plans
Chronic pain costs Canada more than cardiovascular disease, diabetes and cancer combined.
That burden shows up directly in absenteeism, disability claims and pressure on drug plans.
A nationwide shortage of commonly used opioids has pushed previously stable chronic pain patients into crisis, revealing how fragile pain management can be for working Canadians.
According to The Canadian Press, a manufacturing disruption in 2024 affected drugs containing acetaminophen with oxycodone, including Percocet, and acetaminophen with codeine, such as Tylenol 3.
Health Canada told The Canadian Press that drugs containing oxycodone should generally be available again, although some shortages and constrained supplies remain. It said most shortages involving acetaminophen with codeine have resolved.
For some patients, that gap meant an abrupt loss of function.
The Canadian Press reported that Ottawa‑based worker Amanda Godda, 42, with degenerative disc disease, went from working long days at music festivals to being largely bedridden after her usual acetaminophen–oxycodone prescription became unavailable and she had to switch to a generic equivalent.
She described “sharp, searing, unrelenting” pain and now relies on community food support.
Other patients interviewed by The Canadian Press described scrambling to secure alternatives, experiencing withdrawal, or being forced onto different opioids such as morphine with little lead time.
In Alberta, one patient said she phoned every pharmacy in Calgary and Edmonton when her long‑term opioid went out of stock and was told nothing would be available for months, leading to emergency visits for high blood pressure and a spike in sciatic pain.
Another patient in the Greater Toronto Area said a Tramadol shortage just before Christmas triggered withdrawal symptoms, exhaustion, brain fog and heavy use of sick days.
University of Toronto pharmacy professor Mina Tadros told The Canadian Press that opioids face a slightly higher risk of shortage than many other drug classes because only a few manufacturers produce these tightly regulated substances.
For benefit and pension sponsors, those disruptions translate into lost productivity, unstable medication costs, emergency‑room use and increased disability risk when workers who were previously controlled on stable regimens suddenly are not.
Chronic pain often coexists with conditions that are easily missed or dismissed in primary care, especially for women.
CBC News reported that illnesses such as endometriosis, fibromyalgia, lupus and myalgic encephalomyelitis / chronic fatigue syndrome remain underdiagnosed and poorly understood, despite severe impacts on work and daily functioning.
Patients described years of being told nothing was wrong, being labelled as having low pain tolerance or as “drug seeking,” and developing anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation as a result.
In one case reported by CBC News, Moose Jaw resident Shae‑Lynn Bakaluk lived with period pain she described as “razors” and “barbed wire wrapped around every organ” from age 10, missed school and collapsed in gym class, yet waited more than a decade for an endometriosis diagnosis.
She estimated roughly 50 medical visits over the years and said repeated dismissal from clinicians left her questioning her own resilience.
CBC News said Amanda Gibson, a Toronto business owner, started experiencing electric shocks, skin pain, brain fog and headaches in 2020.
She was initially steered toward antidepressants and told nothing was wrong until specialists suggested fibromyalgia, a condition that causes widespread pain and heightened sensitivity due to changes in how the nervous system processes pain.
Sony Singh of the Society of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada told CBC News that when women live with chronic pain, experience diagnostic delays and repeated dismissal, responsibility rests with both providers and families.
He said invisible illnesses disproportionately affect women partly because of gender bias in medicine.
Maria Hudspith, co‑chair of the Canadian Pain Task Force, told CBC News that people with chronic pain are four times as likely as the general population to live with depression and anxiety and twice as likely to die by suicide or experience suicidal thoughts.
Those are exactly the profiles that often evolve into complex, prolonged disability claims.
A national framework, slow to reach practice
In 2019, Health Canada created the Canadian Pain Task Force to lead a three‑year national consultation on chronic pain and to recommend concrete actions to improve recognition and care.
CBC News reported that the task force released its final recommendations in March 2021, but the report “flew under the radar” amid the COVID‑19 pandemic, federal elections, and ministerial changes.
Hudspith told CBC News that physicians have historically been poorly equipped to assess and treat chronic pain and that women’s concerns are often dismissed.
She noted that pain content only recently entered the curriculum of all 17 fully accredited Canadian medical schools, with new continuing‑education offerings now available through Pain Canada.
At the same time, a population‑based study in six provinces published in CMAJ in 2025 reported that incident and prevalent prescription opioid use for pain declined between 2018 and 2022, with more than 80 percent of new patients starting at or below guideline‑recommended doses.
The authors said these trends align with national efforts to promote safer prescribing but warned that opioid‑related deaths continue to rise, driven mainly by the unregulated drug supply.
